AuthorTopic: Wireless 5GHz - v- 2.4GHz (Read 8821 times)

I recently had in my mitts on a dual band 5GHz wifi router, so thought I'd do some testing to see how it compares with my 802.11n 2.4 GHzThought someone may be interested in how it compares in a real world situation.

Tests were performed using speedtest.net London Namesco server on a windows 8.1 laptop & ipad2The summary shows the mean average of 3 tests at each location. If any particular test showed an unexpected result a further test was run.

I'll attach the results summary and let you draw your own conclusion, suffice to say the only real benefit of 5Ghz was if using the laptop in the same room as the router. Other than that well..... it was totally useless in the garden.

That's interesting, because my 5ghz wifi (802.11a) works fine anywhere in the house or garden, just as well, or maybe marginally better, than my 2.4ghz g wifi (both networks powered by a HP procurve WAP).

Unfortunately I have very little info about the other router other than "2.4GHz 300Mbps and 5GHz 300Mbps connection"The ipad wouldnt connect to both the 2.4GHz and the 5 GHz connection, so that will have hampered things too as I had to manually select which one I wanted to connect to. This is a restriction of the ipad.

Im not sure if this is co-incidence or not.. Normally my phone will last a couple of days without charging. But whilst the other router was in use I had to charge it slightly more often. Has anyone else seen similar or is there an explanation.. or was it just one of those things?

My Billion 7800DXL has a choice of 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz (5 GHz by default) and I initially found that the WiFi wasn't as good as I hoped. But switching to 2.4 GHz made a big improvement in signal strength and stability. This was over a distance of about 10 metres and through two brick walls and a floor.

Interesting results. I think it was always accepted that 5 GHz would have poorer range, but it is meant to offer better bandwidth.

I also experimented with it using the 7800DXL, but abandoned it in favour of 2.4. That followed a test of walking up my drive, and down the garden, to identify the cut off point - 2.4 won by a good margin. I have now disabled 5GHz.

But I vaguely recollect however that I also tried testing file transfer rates, copying between the MAC Mini and the file server. Normally it's connected by cable, but I'm pretty sure I tried WiFi when I got the Billion just to compare, and got absolutely 'wow!' transfer speeds at 5GHz. I'll try and repeat that experiment later today, and share the results.

Thanks for the comments and your own observations. One of the things that triggered the testing was the poor signal in the garden. I was very surprised as it was the first time I could recall not being able to get any signal at all. Even on my old st585 be box I could still use my laptop from the patio. Granted the router location has changed since then but not by much only a couple of meters to the corner of the room.

5ghz still reaches my lounge corner previous 'dead spot' ok, although I've long wondered if that's not helped by some sort of interference coming from a neighbours property.

IF all else is equal, 5 GHz is 6 dB worse due to frequency, maybe a dB more for worse NF and whatever the bandwidth ratio is, but set against probably a dB or two for a more efficient aerial.

But as Kitz says " If yours is ac, that may make some difference? " - As most WiFi aerials are monopoles with an earth "by guess and by God !", an AC power line could make a lot of difference in some directions.

Reconsidering my previous comments, it's actually the 2.4GHz rates that I find to be a 'wow', being about a five fold improvement compared to the last time I attempted to measure WiFi rates, between an old DG834GT and a 2005 Dell laptop. But the 5GHz was only marginally better.

The OS/X network utility claimed zero errors during the duration of testing, which I don't entirely trust.

Feel free to check my arithmetic, or to point out flaws in my method, I'm definitely thicker than I used to be and rarely take offence.

Thinking about it, the result from upstairs, where the flaky 5GHz was faster than the stable 2.4GHz may be explainable. The signal is weaker and prone to dropouts but, once connected, there should be less interference and so 5GHz may 'win'.

I am at a loss to explain the results right next to the router, where 5GHz was distinctly slower.

I am also at a loss to explain Kitz's results.

My own experiments have, I'm afraid, also rekindled my long standing scepticism about WiFi. It serves an indispensable purpose in providing web-browsing access for mobile devices. It is also capable, when conditions are right, of impressive data rates. But for any 'serious' home networking it can't be relied upon and falls short of reasonable performance. That is with my devices and in my home at least, which is a modern home with only stud & plasterboard walls and I promise is not that big.

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My own experiments have, I'm afraid, also rekindled my long standing scepticism about WiFi. It serves an indispensable purpose in providing web-browsing access for mobile devices. It is also capable, when conditions are right, of impressive data rates. But for any 'serious' home networking it can't be relied upon and falls short of reasonable performance. That is with my devices and in my home at least, which is a modern home with only stud & plasterboard walls and I promise is not that big.

You're wrong but that's because :

a) the manufacturers have always published PHY rates and you will only get 60-70% MAC efficiency so its been too much smoke'n'mirrors in the consumer market;

b) as mentioned above most 802.11n adaptors default to 20MHz b/w operation only

I don't now - I can max out the USB2 interface to a 802.11ac adaptor when the AP is in the same room. That's 280Mbps or so DATA TRANSFER. I put that in capitals because I simply couldn't believe it. I'm pretty sure that with an internal adaptor I could get 400Mbps burst speeds.

I can get (data, not PHY) speeds of over 120Mbps @ 5GHz through wooden floorboards/associated plasterboard but if you have any sort of blockwork/metal (pipes in my case) in the beampath (on any antenna) then it drops fast.

I bought the thing on the recommendation of RevK, and apart from it running surprisingly hot (vents may have helped here IMHO ) its been so trouble-free I am giving serious consideration to getting one of their external units. The AP software isn't that user-friendly but is comprehensive - eg you can have a rate-limited guest VLAN at the click of a button. The AP runs Linux & most of the advanced stuff assumes people would rather run a script than load up a "web interface".

tl;dr wireless works if you pay for proper RF engineering, which is the business-end of this sort of kit